by Jill Mansell
It wasn’t an emotion he’d ever experienced before, but he thought he might be in love.
Which was crazy, because was it really possible to fall in love with someone when you’d never even held their hand, touched their face, or kissed them?
These thoughts had crossed his mind before, of course, but all of a sudden the emotions were coming together, coalescing and intensifying inside his chest, becoming weighty and more real.
The hairs on the back of his neck were standing at attention; it was one of those moments he knew would remain with him for the rest of his life. Here they were in this dusty, cluttered, dimly lit room, and here he was experiencing a revelation: from her quick wit, empathy, and kindness, to the way her eyes danced and her head tilted back when she laughed, he quite simply adored every single thing about the girl sitting next to him on this blue corduroy sofa.
Oh God. Now what?
Chapter 21
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Lainey. Did she?
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“It’s an awkward situation. I mean, really awkward.” She reached for the cheese knife and helped herself to a slice of softened Cambozola.
Seth’s mouth was dry; he had no idea what could be about to happen.
“You’re going to have to tell her.” She popped the melting cheese into her own mouth, savored the taste, and did a little swoon. “God, this stuff is heaven. No, look, poor Dawn, you have to make sure she completely understands. Because if I thought she was still thinking it, I’d just die.”
Half of Seth was hearing what she was saying; the other half was imagining what Lainey might have been about to say when she’d told him she knew what he was thinking. Except that hadn’t happened and nor could it happen, no matter how much he wanted it to.
“I’ll make sure she understands. Don’t worry.”
“And when you break up with her, do it nicely. Be sensitive. She’s going to be so upset.”
“I thought I’d do it by text.” Seth kept a straight face as Lainey’s mouth dropped open in dismay. “That was a joke, by the way.”
Miraculously on cue, they heard Ned, upstairs in his bedroom, chanting “Pig pig pig” to himself.
“And that’s for trying to be funny.” Smiling, Lainey shook her head at him. “Poor Dawn, you have to be kind to her. Being dumped is always horrible, and it’s probably her first time.”
“Why would it be her first time?”
“Oh come on, look at her—beauty and brains, she’s the whole package! Who in their right mind would ever want to dump someone like that? Apart from you, of course.”
Talk about a surreal situation. “Are you saying you think we should stay together?” He had no intention of doing it, but he asked the question anyway.
“No, no…this is your life and it’s none of my business who you see.” Lainey shook her head. “I’m just saying if you’re going to do it, you need to be gentle with her, because it’s no fun being on the receiving end.” She looked at him, and for a split second, Seth thought he glimpsed emotion of another kind.
Thought or hoped?
He said, “I’ll be gentle,” and experienced once more the sensation of two conversations, one of them unspoken, running concurrently.
“I’ve just realized something. You’ve never been dumped!” Lainey’s eyes widened and she pointed an accusing finger at him. “You haven’t, have you? Oh my God!”
“Let me just…” Seth already knew the answer, obviously, but he pretended to give the question consideration. At last he said, “No, don’t think I have.”
“No one’s ever said they didn’t want to see you anymore. You have no idea what it feels like!” She started to laugh. “That’s amazing. What’s it like to be you?”
“Well, I would have said it was great, up until tonight. But you’re starting to make me feel like I’ve been missing out.”
Lainey popped another grape into her mouth and crunched it between her teeth; she was still laughing and shaking her head. “So you’ve never been rejected? Ever?”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
“Ask me out.”
“Sorry?”
She gave him an encouraging nod. “Go on, do it now.”
“OK, would you like to go out with me on a date?” He knew, of course, what she was going to say.
“Why thank you, Seth, I’d love to.”
A zing of adrenaline shot through his body, because she looked and sounded as if she truly meant it.
Then she made a sound like a reverse record scratch and said, “Only joking! No thanks, no way.” She beamed at him and gave the side of his knee a playful nudge with her toes. “There you go, that’s rejection. How does it feel?”
“I’m devastated, obviously.”
Her eyes danced. “Try not to cry.”
He didn’t want to cry. More than ever now, he wanted to kiss her. Upstairs, a bed creaked and he prepared himself for another cry of “Pig!” from Ned. Except it was coming from a bedroom on the other side of the house and the voice calling “Mum!” belonged to Stevie. But it was Grace’s holiday, and tonight she was wearing the earplugs she so rarely got to wear. Getting to his feet, Seth said, “He probably just needs taking to the bathroom. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
In addition to the bathroom visit, however, Stevie had been spooked by the sound of an owl hooting in the tree just outside and needed reassurance that it wasn’t a pterodactyl intent on bursting in through the window. Seth had to read him a story and spend a further fifteen minutes explaining to him that owls couldn’t fly through glass before Stevie was able to settle down and go back to sleep.
By the time he returned downstairs, he saw that Lainey had beaten Stevie to it.
She was still stretched out where he’d left her, and her head had fallen to the right.
Her breathing was slow and even, her left hand rested across her stomach and the amber glow from the table lamp was throwing shadows across her face.
Seth hesitated, then sat back down on the sofa, half expecting the movement to wake her up so they could carry on their conversation. But she didn’t stir—even her lashes hadn’t flickered—and now he was faced with a dilemma, because on the one hand he didn’t want to shake her awake, but on the other hand, this was his bed. If she were to wake up an hour from now and stumble upstairs, how would she feel if she pushed open the door to her room and found him fast asleep in her bed?
He weighed up his options. It had been a long and tiring day. She was exhausted and so was he. The evening had come to an end, which was obviously a shame, but maybe it was just as well. Resting against the squashy sofa cushions, Seth tilted his head sideways and studied Lainey. A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek and his fingers itched to move it away, but that would be wrong, if not downright creepy. He watched her rib cage rise and fall and found his own breathing slowing to match hers. Outside in the darkness the owl hooted again, but the house thankfully remained silent. He felt his limbs grow heavy and his own eyelids begin to close…
* * *
Lainey stirred; someone was touching her face. A finger was prodding her cheek and warm breath was landing on her temple. Her eyes snapped open and she almost let out a yelp, because Ned’s face was completely filling her field of vision, his eyes less than four inches from her own.
An unnerving sight, to say the least. “Are you awake?” he said.
“I am now.” At least he’d stopped repeatedly poking her cheek with his index finger.
“Pigs.”
She swallowed, still in the process of gathering her thoughts and discovering that she was downstairs lying on the sofa.
More to the point, she was not its only occupant. Anyway, pigs. “What about them?”
“When are we going to see them? Is it still two o’clock?”
<
br /> She nodded. “Yes.”
“Definite, though? Definitely two o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“OK.” Ned, who’d been kneeling in front of her, wrote the information down in his notebook, then clambered laboriously to his feet. “You can go back to sleep now. Good night.”
He left the living room and made his way upstairs. She heard the bedroom door close, then the creaking of floorboards as he climbed back into his bed.
She silently exhaled. By this time, every inch of her body was prickling with the awareness that she was lying on her side along the length of the sofa…and behind her was Seth. Her bare feet were entwined with his, she could feel his left hand resting on the dip of her waist, and the back of her head was nestled into the curved space between his arm and his chest.
It was simultaneously the most thrilling experience in the world and the most mortifying, because how embarrassing was it to have fallen asleep on what was effectively Seth’s bed? He was her boss, she was his employee, and now here they were practically wrapped around each other, albeit fully clothed. But she could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck, and the intimacy of it was causing her stomach to squirm with anticipation, because if he were to move his head just the tiniest bit closer, his lips could be brushing against her hypersensitive skin, dropping light, languorous kisses… Oh crikey, and now she could feel the microscopic hairs on her neck standing on end, as if they were reaching out to him, clamoring and yearning to be kissed.
The downside was, no way could she stay here. It was all very well innocently falling asleep and staying asleep, but Ned would be bound to mention at some stage tomorrow that he’d woken her up and they’d had a conversation. Which would make it odd—if not downright suspicious—if it then came out that she’d stayed down here in Seth’s arms.
She remained where she was for one minute more, silently committing each blissful moment and sensation to memory. Then, muscle by muscle, she carefully removed herself from the situation, breaking the connection between Seth’s body and her own. His breathing didn’t alter; he was clearly out for the count.
Finally off the sofa, she turned and gazed down at him. He looked almost irresistible lying there on his own, with the shadows from his dark lashes falling across his cheekbones, and his lips fractionally parted. Poor Dawn, if he went ahead and finished with her; it couldn’t be easy to love and lose a boyfriend, especially when you’d already decided he was going to be yours for good.
Night. Lainey mouthed the word rather than said it, then puckered up her lips and blew Seth a kiss, purely because it was three in the morning and there was no one there to see her do it.
As she left the living room, she let out another squeak, because Ned was making his way silently down the stairs again, still clutching his notebook and pen.
“Pigs at two o’clock,” she whispered.
“I know that. You already told me. But what time do we have to leave this house to get there?”
“It’s ten minutes away. So we’ll leave here at ten to two.”
He wrote this information in his notebook, then lifted his head. “Are you Seth’s girlfriend?”
Lainey’s heart thudded. I wish. “No, sweetheart. I’m not. Shall we go back up the stairs now?”
“OK. Can I have toast for breakfast with strawberry jam? Cut into squares?”
“Of course you can.”
He blinked. “But they have to be the right kind of squares.”
“They will be,” said Lainey. “I promise.”
Chapter 22
The visit to the pigs had been a great success. Every year the farmer, who was an old friend of the boys’ aunt, invited them to his farm, and every year it was the highlight of their holiday. Dozens of photos were taken. In the barn, Ned and Stevie were allowed to hold the pink, wriggling piglets. Outside, they’d watched the older pigs rolling around like happy hippos in the mud. Stevie had wanted to take one home with him and went into a meltdown when Grace explained that he couldn’t. And when Ned had presented Lainey with a picture he’d drawn of a beaming cross-eyed piglet covered with a tartan blanket, he’d said, “This is for you because I heard you tell Mum that you love pigs in blankets.”
Next, it was time for their visit to Clifton. Seth pulled the van into a private parking bay outside the travel agency and smiled at the sight of a large black cat stretched out on the mat outside the front door.
As they climbed out, he said, “This is my agency. And see up there? That’s my flat. We can go inside and have a look around if you want.”
It was clearly an offer they could refuse. Stevie didn’t even bother to reply.
Bay let out a wail. Ned said, “No, that would be boring. Is this your cat?”
Seth shook his head. “His name’s Jeremy. He belongs to my friend Flo, who lives around the corner, but he likes to spend a lot of his time on our doormat. Don’t you, Jeremy?”
The cat slowly blinked, eyeing Seth with an air of superiority followed by a dismissive swish of his tail.
“Jeremy’s a stupid name for a cat,” said Stevie. “Come on, we need to go to the bridge. Hurry up.”
“Kkkhhheeeiiishhh,” hissed Jeremy.
Together they made their way across Clifton until they came to the iconic suspension bridge stretched across the rocky sides of the Avon Gorge. High in the almost cloudless sky above them, two hot-air balloons drifted across in silence from the other side. All around them people were gazing up at the balloons, captivated and enthralled by the magical sight of their stately progress.
Apart from Stevie and Ned, who couldn’t have been less interested and cared only about getting to the bridge, with its geometric lines, graceful swooping curves, and pleasingly parallel rows of metal struts.
“This is my favorite bridge in the world,” Ned announced.
Lainey gave his hand a squeeze. “I can see why. It’s amazing.”
Far below them, the River Avon glinted gunmetal gray in the sunshine. The six of them made their way along the pedestrian walkway, crossing the bridge, until Ned said, “Is this the middle? OK, everyone stop now so I can take photos. Out of the way.”
They obediently waited to one side while he took a dozen or so photographs of the bridge itself and the view toward the center of Bristol. Then he gestured for them to take up position at the central point. “Come on, stand in a line. Mum, you and Bay next to Lainey, then Seth and Stevie. That’s it, all in a row. Now hold hands.” He eyed them beadily, sensing reluctance. “Everyone has to hold hands.”
Lainey felt her bare shoulders prickle with embarrassment. It was all very well waking up in the middle of the night to discover you’d fallen asleep on the sofa next to someone you found wildly attractive and had managed to get your legs a tiny bit entwined with theirs. But being fully conscious and actually holding hands with them in broad daylight was altogether more personal.
Inspiration struck and she said brightly, “Let’s not have Stevie on the end. It’s better if he stands between me and Seth so that—”
“No.” Ned was already shaking his head in don’t-mess-with-me fashion. “You can’t do it that way; it wouldn’t make the right shape. You all have to stay where you are.”
Next to her, Lainey felt Seth move closer and realized he was uncomfortable too. But if there was no gap between them, the fact that they weren’t holding hands wouldn’t be apparent.
“You’re doing it all wrong!” Ned shouted like a frustrated film director. “You all need to be this far apart so I can see the shape of your arms and your hands holding each other, like when you showed me last night how to make paper dolls. It has to be the proper way or the pictures won’t be any good!”
Well, she’d tried. And it was clearly her own fault for teaching him how to make strings of paper dolls in the first place. Catching Seth’s eye, she mouthed Let’s do it and held out h
er hand.
The next moment, his warm fingers closed around hers and her rib cage expanded to make room for a juddery intake of breath. She had to pretend to cough to disguise it, prompting Ned to say bossily, “Don’t cough. Just stand still and look happy.”
Happy. Lainey gazed directly into the lens of his camera and did her best to ignore the zings of sensation caused by physical contact, because feeling as if she might be about to spontaneously combust was hardly restful. And Ned the perfectionist wouldn’t be happy until he’d taken at least ten more photos.
“No, don’t look that happy,” he ordered. “That’s too much.”
* * *
In accordance with the final items on Sunday’s list, takeout pizzas were collected from their favorite Italian restaurant on Whiteladies Road, then eaten with relish back at the cottage before cases were repacked and order restored. A note for Grace’s sister, apologizing for the broken plant pot out on the patio, was left on the kitchen table alongside its brand-new replacement.
At six o’clock, they piled once more into the van and set off home.
The Sunday-evening holiday exodus from Devon and Cornwall meant traffic was heavy heading north but light on their side of the motorway.
“Don’t look,” Ned instructed as they whizzed past the exit to Weston-super-Mare. “I’m going to draw you a picture.”
“For me? Fantastic,” said Lainey.
“You have to turn away properly or you’ll see it.”
The scritch-scratch of pencil against paper began. Ned was a painstaking artist, carefully adding details and coloring in the drawing with shades of light and dark blue. Lainey’s neck began to ache as they passed the turnoffs to Burnham-on-Sea, then Bridgwater, then Cullompton. Finally, as they were approaching Exeter, he tipped the colored pencils back into his pencil case and said, “Finished.”